A Poetics of Third Theatre

A Poetics of Third Theatre offers an in-depth, critical analysis of Third Theatre, a transnational community of theatre groups and artists united by a shared set of values and a laboratory attitude. This book takes a genealogical account of Third Theatre as a concept and a practice that draws attention to the historical Third Theatre Encounters that have taken place across Europe and Latin America since the 1970s. The work of renowned Third Theatre groups and organisations, such as LUME (Brazil), Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), Triangle Theatre (UK) and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium - NTL (Denmark), are explored to reveal how a multifarious poetics of Third Theatre is manifest through these artists' approaches to performer training, dramaturgy and cultural action. Three critical pillars - unconditional hospitality, artisanal craft and (re)enchantment - are employed in order to illuminate the shared ethos of the Third Theatre community and its exemplification as a mode of cultural performance. This informative text will be of great use to students and scholars of drama and theatre studies, and its dedicated section on performer training exercises offers the reader pathways into an experiential engagement with Third Theatre craft.

Jane Turner is the author of Eugenio Barba (2004, 2nd edn 2018), in the Routledge Performance Practitioners series. She has also published material on Third Theatre, Balinese theatre, performer training, theatre ethnography, the sublime and contemporary theatre performances. As an academic at the Manchester School of Theatre, she teaches on the Drama and Contemporary Performance degree programme. Patrick Campbell is co-author, with Margaret Pikes, of Owning Our Voices: Vocal Discovery in the Wolfsohn-Hart Tradition (2021), in the Routledge Voice Studies series. He has also published material on Third Theatre, Brazilian theatre, performer training and contemporary theatre performance. As an academic at the Manchester School of Theatre, he teaches on the Drama and Contemporary Performance degree programme.

Part 1 1. Third Theatre: A Genealogy of the Concept 2. Third Theatre: A Genealogy of the Practice Part 2 3. LUME (Brazil) 4. Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru) 5. Triangle Theatre (UK) 6. Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Denmark): Third Theatre Today Part 3 7. From Interculturalism to Cultural Performance 8. Third Theatre: Embodiment, Craft, (Re)Enchantment 9. Third Theatre Exercises: An Expanded Practice